During the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been several articles about "Zoombombing" incidents, where uninvited participants join and harass the presenter and participants. If you are concerned about this happening during one of your classes, then follow the recommendations in this article about scheduling more secure meetings and what tools you can use to during a meeting to keep it secure.
Keep your meeting information private
First and foremost, only share the joining information with your intended attendees. To the best of our knowledge, the majority of "Zoombombing" has occurred when someone has posted meeting information in a public setting. Direct calendar invitations, emails to attendees or invitations sent through Canvas are good ways of inviting members to your meeting.
Scheduling a more secure meeting
Complete details on scheduling Zoom meeting are available at this link. This section focuses only on security settings when scheduling a meeting.The two screen shots below highlight the recommended settings to use when scheduling a more secure Zoom meeting. Scheduling meetings can be accomplished from both the Desktop Zoom client or from the Web Zoom interface, both are depicted below. Brief explanations of the settings follow the screenshots.
Desktop Zoom Client:
Meeting ID
- Generate Automatically Click on this option to generate your Meeting ID when scheduling a meeting. We do not recommend using a Personal Meeting ID at this time. Think of it as similar to giving out your phone number, share it with only with people you trust.
Password
- Require meeting password Click on this option to add a layer of access protection to your meeting.
To change this for all new meetings you schedule, review Enabling Password Settings for Your Own Meetings and Webinars.
Advanced Options / Meeting Options
Enable waiting room Click on this option to allow you to manually grant access to a meeting from a waiting room. As meeting host, you can see who is awaiting access to the meeting and grant or deny them access (see Management Participants below). A one minute video of how to use the waiting room feature can be seen here.
Join before host. We do not recommend using this feature. This ensures that nobody is in your meeting waiting to surprise you when you join.
More details, including how to make this setting your default for future meetings, can be found in the User section of the Waiting Room document.
Web Zoom interface:
Updating an existing meeting's security settings
The above settings will not impact meetings that you've already scheduled. For instructions on applying these settings to an existing meeting, refer to the information found at this link.
Please note: you may need to resend meeting details to participants after making changes.
Security settings while in a meeting
Meeting controls are located in a pop up menu bar along the bottom of your screen while in a meeting. You may need to move your mouse to the bottom of the Zoom window to make this menu appear. Also, note that menu items and controls are more visible if you maximize your meeting window (or make full screen) - otherwise you may have to look for and click on an ellipsis labeled more to see all controls mentioned here.
Participant management and Security controls are available to use at anytime during a meeting via the meeting controls menu - without having to leave the meeting window. The two controls are labeled Manage Participants (look for a two heads/busts icon) and Security (look for a shield icon).
Manage Participants
We recommend clicking and opening this control (or press Alt-U) during a meeting - especially at the beginning. From this window, you can see who is in the waiting room, grant or deny access, mute and unmute participants, enable and restrict chatting features, remove participants from a meeting, and more.
Security Menu
The Security Menu can be used anytime during a meeting (look for a shield icon labeled Security) to help secure your meeting. Clicking on it pops up a small menu with several options that you can turn on and off. Click on the operative phrase in the menu to turn it on; a feature is activated when you see a tick next to it:
- Lock Meeting This is used to lock out anybody not already in the meeting. Use this carefully as you may inadvertently lock someone out who has left and is trying to rejoin (e.g., to try and establish a better connection), or if someone is late they may not be able to join in. Should someone try to join after the meeting is locked, then you can still admit them via the waiting room (see Manage Participants above).
- Enable waiting room This feature allows you to grant or deny access into your meeting, without interrupting the meeting itself. The waiting room appears at the top of the Participants window (see Manage Participants above).
- Share Screen When activated, this feature allows participants to share their screens with everyone in your meeting. If sharing screens (other than your own) is not warranted, make sure there is not a tick next to this security feature. Alternatively, if there are things for participants to share, make sure there is a tick next to this feature.
- Chat When ticked, this feature allows participants to chat with each other and/or with the entire meeting group. Restrictions on chatting during a meeting are controlled in the Participants window (see Manage Participants above).
- Rename Themselves When ticked, this allows attendees to change the name that is used to identify themselves in the participant list and in the video thumbnail windows. Turning this off makes it harder for participants to hide behind monikers, but it also leaves attendees being stuck with their registered names, or listed as a phone number if they join by phone.
Regarding phone participants
If you have people joining via phone, we recommend you ensure that they verbally identify themselves as soon as they join and prior to continuing your meeting. Once they identify themselves, you as host have the option of renaming them via the Manage Participant's menu (see above). Renaming them labels them with a name and not just a number during the meeting. Please contact canvas_help@whitman.edu if you'd like assistance adding a passcode for phone participants.